#hell is us

Game? Hell is Us (PS5)

Feathers, fire, and fall damage? There is luckily no feathers or fire to contend with in this game. There is fire as set pieces, but you can't set yourself on fire as I am wont to do.

There is, however, fall damage. Since there is no jump button, it isn't always a problem as any predetermined falls when following a path are usually small enough to keep any fall damage from happening. It's when you've locked on to an enemy and dodge straight off a cliff like I did at least once, that fall damage becomes a serious issue.

Animal companion? No living, breathing animal companion, but you do get a drone that docks on your shoulder and gives off bird vibes.

Character options? You play a predetermined character, so there is no character creation. The minimal character customization comes in the form of various ball caps you can find throughout the world and have the character wear.

The HUD & menu layout? The HUD consists of a health and stamina bar in the upper left, your special weapon attacks in the lower left, and your drone special attacks in the lower right. The meter for your special weapon attacks is also in the upper left, directly below the health and stamina bar.

The menu is a little more complicated. When opened, it looks like the character opens up a tablet, which I thought was clever, and there are quite a number of tabs to look through.

The main tab is the quest tab. Hell is Us doesn't have a map, so the quest tab almost doubles as the map in a way. Each quest has a branching web of characters and locations and items that you've discovered that can help you figure out where you need to go next for that quest.

There is a tab for your loadout, where you can equip weapons, quick slots, weapon special attacks, and relics that can give you passive and active abilities. There is another tab for your drone where you can equip special abilities for that as well.

The next tab is for items. There are a number of sub tabs in this one tab, which range from equipable items, quest items, lore stuff, weapons, weapon bonuses, drone items, and a few others.

The final tab is for more side content stuff. Throughout the game, you'll find NPCs you can do things for. This keeps track of those, although it only does so with a tiny picture and a title that may or may not actually help you remember who you needed to talk to and what you need to do. The same goes for a tab on puzzles, although these are at least split up by region. The last side content stuff does have a little more information, but not much.

some opinions? Overall, it is a really good game. It's got the jank of a game made by a smaller team, but that doesn't take away from the fact that the atmosphere and the gameplay kept pulling me back again and again. I think the atmosphere was the biggest part of that.

The only major issue I had was with the background story going on in the world, i.e. the civil war. The world the main character runs around in is in the throws of a civil war between two religiously ethnic groups living in an Eastern European country.

With the added supernatural manifestations of emotions, its obvious that the developers were going for the war is bad and both sides do bad things moral. However, as this game was made for a wider audience, I believe the message gets stretched too thin and ends up crossing over into the realm of a problematic allegorical portrayal of real life conflict. I feel like this is spread even thinner as it's revealed that this conflict is just another chapter in a long story of back and forth genocide for the country and its people.

If you're able to overlook this misguided story, there is a good game here. Combat is simple, with just enough variety to keep it from getting too stale. The puzzles are challenging without being too difficult and if you do find them too easy or difficult, you can adjust the difficulty of just the puzzles. I was able to keep the difficulty the same throughout my playthrough and I only had to look up one answer which I am still not 100% how to arrive at, but shout out to walkthrough writers for getting me through it.

Exploration is rewarding and satisfying. The lack of map does make things tricky and there is a lot of backtracking, which is further complicated by the lack of fast travel, at least within each area, it also made me feel accomplished when I was able to find my way somewhere or successfully double back after an epiphany about a puzzle.

The best part is that is doesn't over stay it's welcome. The story can be completed in around 20 hours and while there is side content, it doesn't bloat the world and feels relevant to getting to know the world and the people around the main character.